September 2017 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Peter_S]

Since no one dares to start the monthly sacrosanct* Kiss and Cry** Adsense topic,... have a nice month :)

* [dictionary.cambridge.org...]
** [en.wikipedia.org...]

[nubchai]

Media.net also has great publisher support. You'll get an actual person you can talk to.

[Ironside]

For arguments sake, let's assume that you are getting £5 for page RPM. Wouldn't it be best to use the same ad unit and channel on every page, rather than using different channels for different pages?

EDIT: although thinking about it now, I suppose you can use the same AdSense unit with different channels.

[trebuchet]

I have a 336x280 unit just after the article ends. The unit is not performing well since the beginning. When I earned 117$ just a few days ago, the bottom unit made around 5$. Would it be a good idea to remove this unit, as this will apparently increase CPC of other ad units?

It depends if you're running a 336x280 higher up the page. If so then that will be finishing higher in the auction and generating better EPC. Also, if the unit is at the bottom of the page then its AVV is likely to be much lower than your higher units.

Most of my page text is quite long so I tend not to bother with ad units at the bottom. I prefer to suggest another of my pages and keep them on site.

[MayankParmar]

Hurricane Harvey, nuclear news wasn't enough and now Hurricane Irma. Looks the US traffic is not going to be back to normal anytime soon.

[MayankParmar]

AdSense stuck or what?! Nobody is clicking today! Lowest CTR ever and RPM is down too. I had better CTR than this on 8th August! Earnings increased by just 1$ in past 4 hours :'(

[jovica888]

I have the really bad start. About 30-40% of my earnings are dropped :)
We need to w8 next week. I think the earning will be normal then.

[taljanich]

For us AdSense back to normal (we had huge drop in last 10 days of August)

[Ironside]

For me, September has got off to a pretty good start. September 1 was well above average in the last few days have been steady. Looks like today might be quite good as well. CPC isn't brilliant at 13p, but RPM is something like £3.60 p I click through rate is nearly 3%.

[MayankParmar]

August end was damn good but since the almost 5-6 days, the earnings dropped once again. No recovery yet.

[Maximum44]

Just a heads up: today is labor day in the USA. Traffic is lower than usual. Got a pretty decent average rpm though. Was better the last couple of days :D

[MayankParmar]

Very bad Monday! I had same USA traffic but a huge drop of 40%, thanks to low CTR. This month is -33% so far. Pathetic.

[keyplyr]

Adsense earnings drop on holidays (Labor Day for USA today) mostly because people are not at work in front of their computers - however if you've optimized well for mobile, your Adsense earnings may not drop as much.

[Ironside]

I have a couple of YouTube channels, one of which is associated with AdSense and earns me a little bit of money each month. However, my other AdSense channel doesn't earn any money at the moment. I've tried adding it onto my AdSense account but can't seem to work out how to do it. Can someone give me some advice please?

[capulkit]

Overall earnings so far higher then last month. But again traffic is higher, earnings are not higher in same proportion.
Yesterday was the day with lowest CTR. Seems Adsense issue, today earnings resumed but still have to find an alternative source (afraid does not exist).

[obansir]

Worst Adsense period ever
Here too from Nigeria same

[Maximum44]

Just a little less traffic and a slightly lower rpm for labor day, not bad at all really. Best holiday numbers in a while :D

[ivok]

Today CPC is too low. I don't know if ad spenders can disable their ads during weekends and resume again on weekdays...

[NickMNS]

I am seeing some new strange, very strange ads. Ads that consist only of an image of clouds no text, no call to action, nothing. The ads appear not to be clickable (mods note: the image is not specific as it applies to many ads from many advertisers)
[imgur.com...]

I believe that the ads point to a variety of domains, I have only been able to identify two for sure, including at least one big brand. The big brand ads shows the "Detected Advertiser" as the big brand to which the ad was pointing. But the other target domain shows the "Detected Advertiser" as some company that has nothing to do with the target domain, and there are other instances where this domain's ads are from an Adwords Account. I have records of these ads showing up as early as August 3rd. They account for thousands of impressions over the past month.

So I am not sure if this is an AdSense bug, or some sort of hack, or yet another large scale scam. But it is definitely strange. Has anybody else seen this?

[ivok]

I am getting almost every day small clawbacks , which never happened before on such regular basis...not happy about it

[ember]

Has anybody else seen this?

Everything looks fine here, knock on wood.

[MayankParmar]

Yesterday was good but today it dropped again. Still -20% so far this month.

I don't know what I should do (sob)

[NickMNS]

@Maximum44 this is the big brand that I have seen. It is the main reason that I have thought nothing of them thus far. But today I noticed the same ad from another advertiser and with a tell tale sign of spam, that is an advertiser that does not match the destination URL. In this specific case a Japanese food distributor as the advertisers and a mens fashion website as the target domain. I am quite sure that I saw yet another advertiser as well, but I didn't flag it. I tried to go back and find it but it was one of tens of thousands of ads in my review center, so no luck. It is like searching for a needle in a haystack.

[Maximum44]

Check the link. Thats the cloud banner ad and someone had to say something about it at stack overflow [meta.stackoverflow.com...]

"What's actually going on here is that some campaigns by advertisers use DoubleVerify to monitor delivery of their ads. DoubleVerify wrappers accomplish a handful of things, but one of the principal goals is to ensure that ads are only served in their prescribed geographies. We're operating under the assumption that there is something amiss with the geo-blocking set up by DoubleVerify, and reached out to inform them. In the meantime, enjoy the clouds!"

[NickMNS]

@Maximum44 Thanks for finding that link. So let me get this straight, advertiser can publish ads creatives that do not show anything and cannot be clicked? And how are we compensated for this exactly? [rhetorical question]

There goes another few thousand ad impressions stolen by AdSense.

[Peter_S]

@Maximum44 Thanks for finding that link. So let me get this straight, advertiser can publish ads creatives that do not show anything and cannot be clicked? And how are we compensated for this exactly? [rhetorical question]

There goes another few thousand ad impressions stolen by AdSense.

From what I understand, when reviewing your ad center, YOU are seeing the clouds, because YOU are not in the geographic location that this ad targets. In real conditions, people viewing this ad at your site will not see the clouds, but the real ad content, since it be displayed only to visitors matching the geographic location set by the advertiser.

After, if the "clouds" still appear at your site, to some of your visitors, it might be a mistake in the geo-targetting, but it doesn't mean that all displays are erroneous.

[NickMNS]

@Peter_S that seems like a logical explanation. But I'm not sure it is the case, or that is always the case. It would make sense for big brand hardware ads, as I am in Canada and that chain has limited penetration into the Canadian market.

There were some other stack-exchange threads discussing these ads and it seems that this may also be caused by errors with tags in the ad code in which case the clouds appear for all users. I believe that I have seen these ad-creatives while surfing on other websites, so users are seeing them. I sent a message to Adsense support, I'll wait to see what they reply.

[ember]

So I chatted with Adsense this morning, asking about the 30% density rule for the upcoming Chrome filter and about 336x280 on mobile. She said 336x280 on mobile is not recommended, so I showed her the Google video in my account about their recommending this size on mobile. She was surprised and not aware that 336x280 is recommended. Geeze o Pete. We are now having to update Adsense reps on their own policies.

[Peter_S]

it seems that this may also be caused by errors with tags in the ad code

I don't know if you ever kept your web browser console opened while browsing the Internet, but, I often see lot of errors with Adsense codes. I mean, Javascript errors, which are not handled, infinite loop, mime type errors, access to HTTP while all is in HTTPS, etc, etc, all this resulting in ads not showing. This is not often, but it happens. But I wonder which % of ads are not correctly showing because of all these tiny errors here and there. And how much impressions are wasted.

Geeze o Pete

Me ?! :)

We are now having to update Adsense reps on their own policies.

That's not really new. Adsense became very complex, and no one seems to be able to master all the knowledge and rules. Also, lot of these rules are rather subjective, and two adsense reps can have different interpretation of them.

[james007]

Perhaps I'm a bit dim, but if <SNIP>, are seeming to post strange ads - why are we coyly talking about a <SNIP>? How does it help anyone to obfuscate?

[edited by: martinibuster at 3:48 am (utc) on Sep 7, 2017]
[edit reason] Removed specifics [/edit]

[keyplyr]

I've seen the "cloud" ads intermittently for a couple months on different sites. Saw it once or twice on my personal site in July.